5.  The applicant is a private limited company with its registered office in Bratislava. The applications on its behalf were lodged by Mr D. Paľko and Mr M. Morong, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of its managing board.
6.  On 15 July 2005 the applicant company concluded a contract with Slovak Radio, a public-law institution. Under that contract, taken together with two additional ones concluded on 20 September 2005 and 27 January 2006, the applicant company acquired the right, in exchange for compensation paid to Slovak Radio, to recover unpaid broadcast receiver licences in 355,917 cases, plus additional sums for default in those payments.
7.  On 20 October 2008 the Bratislava I District Court confirmed the validity of the above contracts. The decision became final on 5 November 2008.
8.  The applicant company was obliged to sue those persons who had refused to pay the debt which it had acquired the right to recover. The applicant company prepared individual actions with a request for payment orders to be issued against the debtors. Given the number of persons concerned, the actions were generated by means of computer software and recorded on DVDs. The DVDs were sent to the district courts concerned, accompanied by an explanatory letter.
9.  Thus the applicant company, on 31 March 2006 and 24 July 2006, lodged actions, in electronic form, with several district courts. On 19 October 2006, after officials of the Ministry of Justice had stated that courts were in a position to register such actions, the applicant company resubmitted the first group of actions to the courts concerned on DVDs. The courts refused to register the actions, indicating that they lacked the equipment to receive and process submissions made and signed electronically. Further relevant details of the applications under examination are set out in Appendix I.
10.  In one case the applicant company submitted, on 14 December 2006, with the agreement of the Svidník District Court, a printed version of the 379 actions it had lodged on a DVD on 31 March 2006. The documents in support of the claims remained available on the DVD exclusively. The file numbers indicate that the District Court registered those actions as having been lodged in 2007.
11.  On 15 December 2008 the applicant company informed the Court that its claims relating to the actions which the district courts had refused to register had become statute-barred.
12.  In 2006, following the district courts’ refusal to register the actions it had submitted on DVDs, the applicant company lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court in respect of each individual refusal. Referring to Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and its constitutional equivalent, it alleged a violation of its right of access to a court.
13.  The Constitutional Court rejected the complaints in the cases under consideration as having been lodged outside the statutory time-limit of two months. The decisions stated that the applicant company had earlier learned, in the context of its previous attempts to lodge actions electronically, that district courts lacked the necessary equipment for processing such actions and had failed to lodge a complaint with the Constitutional Court at that time. The Constitutional Court considered it irrelevant that the above-mentioned time-limit had been complied with in respect of the district courts’ refusal to register actions in those cases which underlay the constitutional complaints under consideration (further details of the individual proceedings are set out in Appendix I).
14.  On 31 March 2006 several courts asked the Ministry of Justice for instructions as to how they should process the applicant company’s submissions lodged in electronic form. The Ministry advised the courts to wait until the position had been analysed.
15.  In a letter of 3 April 2006, the Ministry stated that as ordinary courts did not have an electronic registration facility, the conditions for receiving submissions in electronic form as laid down in Law no. 215/2002 Coll. were not met.
16.  At meetings with presidents of district and regional courts held on 24 November 2006 and from 1 to 2 February 2007 the Ministry of Justice concluded that ordinary courts were duly equipped for receiving submissions bearing a secured electronic signature.
17.  A press release issued by the Ministry of Justice on 16 October 2008 indicates that the Ministry had published on its website the electronic addresses of individual courts and information about the filing of submissions signed electronically.